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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251864">in this album, there’s a picture...</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards'>clickingkeyboards</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ancestors, F/F, F/M, Family History, Future, Future Fic, Happy, M/M, Small humans from the modern era read about the MMU detectives being their ancestors, i like this fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:07:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,825</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251864</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been seventy-four years since Hazel Wong closed the case of the Death on the Nile, and her great-granddaughter is searching through photo albums to research for a school project.</p><p> <em>I didn’t realise that people like me existed that far in the past, let alone that they were still alive.</em></p><p>  <em>I’d do anything to talk to her.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alexander Arcady/Hazel Wong, Amina El Maghrabi/Daisy Wells, Daisy Wells &amp; Hazel Wong, George Mukherjee/Lavinia Temple</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/TisBee/gifts">TisBee</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“They want me to learn about my heritage for school. You know, so I can write a speech and make a presentation on it!”</p><p>Anvika raises her eyebrow at me and doesn’t say anything else; she is peculiar that way.</p><p>Of course, I don’t mind her being odd. I don’t think I’m allowed to mind, given that she is my cousin. Although she is three years older than me, and has a real Head of House badge that says ‘Anvika Mukherjee’ in golden letters, we get along like a house on fire. The only belongings I have with my name on are my school books, but you can hardly read the ‘Rose Arcady’ because my handwriting is so messy. </p><p>I am in London right now, sitting on the fluffy rug in my cousin’s bedroom and wondering why she is looking at me with such an odd face as I ask about my heritage. “What is it, Anvi?”</p><p>“We have boxes and boxes of stuff that you can look at, so your research won’t be a problem.”</p><p>Our family is a bit odd, I know that. While half of the girls at my school have a mantlepiece picture at their grandparent’s house of some great-great uncle that died in the war, we have a picture of my great grandfather receiving an honours award from the British government. At Anvika’s house, because she lives with her grandparents (who are very peculiar), there is a picture hanging on the wall of her great grandfather standing in a great big group of men and women in smart old-fashioned clothes. <em>Bletchley Park, 1941 </em>is written along the bottom, though I don’t quite know why.</p><p>“Can I research?”</p><hr/><p>After dinner, Anvi hauls down the oldest photo album of the bunch. There are shelves and shelves of them in the dining room, because our great grandmother is very particular about documenting everything. She lives in Cambridge and I haven’t met her too many times, but everybody mentions Grandma Hazel so much that I keep forgetting that I don’t have that many memories of her, because all of the random mentions of her keep filling up my head. After she moved to Cambridge, Anvika took over sorting and dusting all of the photo albums. Even though she was only eight, she has done a very good job of it, in my opinion.</p><p>Anvika laughs at the way I jump up and down, and sets the album on the dining room table. </p><p>In the front, Grandma Hazel has drawn a family tree. The writing is very curly and old-fashioned, and I find it very pretty. At the very top of the page, it says <em>Ah Yeh</em>, and then it says <em>Vincent </em>next to some Cantonese writing, and he is joined up to two different people. The Cantonese is far too difficult for me to read, but the English names are <em>June </em>and <em>Jie-Jie</em>. Vincent and Jie-Jie had two girls, called <em>Rose</em> and <em>May</em>, and a boy called <em>Teddy</em>, and then, circled in red underneath Vincent and June, is <em>Hazel Arcady (née Wong)</em>.</p><p>She is joined up with my great grandfather, <em>Alexander Arcady</em>. Over the top of their names, she has written ‘<em>met at thirteen, together at fifteen, married at twenty-four</em>.’</p><p>When I count on my fingers, I find that they got married during the war. Grandma Hazel seems to have had an exciting life in her prime, so I am not surprised.</p><p>It goes down to my grandparents, and down to my mum and Anvika’s dad (who changed his surname to Anvika’s mum’s when they got married). And then down to Anvika and me.</p><p>“Grandma Hazel met her husband when they were thirteen, that’s so cute! I wonder how they met.” I feel myself sparkling, but I don’t care; I <em>love</em> old romance books, and one day I swear I am going to meet a pretty girl at a dance, wearing a dress from the 1920s, and I’m going to fall in love. “Maybe at a dance, or at school! That would be so cute.”</p><p>“They met on holiday,” Anvika tells me, shifting her chair closer to mine.</p><p>“Aw! That’s even sweeter than what I thought! I wonder if Grandma Hazel liked him right away.”</p><p>I trace back up Anvika’s side of the family tree. From Anvika’s mum, it goes up to Anvika’s grandparents, and from Anvika’s grandfather to a lady called <em>Lavinia Temple</em> and a man called <em>George Mukherjee. </em>Above their names, Grandma Hazel has written <em>‘met at fifteen, fell in love two hours later, and George swore that he was going to marry her three hours later’</em>.</p><p>A pencil dotted line is drawn from George and to my great grandfather. Above the line, Grandma Hazel has written ‘<em>best friends—mildly peeved about the fact their grandchildren ended up together’</em>.</p><p>Surprised, I laugh and Anvika laughs too. “See? People from the thirties weren’t boring!”</p><p>Drawn next to George, as his brother, is somebody called <em>Harold Mukherjee</em>. What astonishes me is not that he was married (though the little symbol that signifies their marriage has a word written above it), but that the man he was married to is called <em>Bertie Wells</em>. When I squint, I realise that the little word, referring to their union, is <em>illegal</em>. It sends a little thrill through my fingertips. I had gay ancestors, and they broke the law to be married.</p><p>Anvika sees me smiling. “It’s those two, isn’t it?”</p><p>“I didn’t know that… that gay people did things like that! They… they lived!” I exclaim, and I am talking fast. “They didn’t get killed for it, not like they tell us at school. Look, they didn’t die in their twenties, or in the eighties of that horrid disease. They’re real gay people, and they lived!”</p><p>“You’ll like this even better.”</p><p>I follow where she is pointing and I see that beside Bertie on the family tree is a woman whose name has been written with great care.</p><p> <em>Daisy Wells</em>.</p><p>She is joined up with another lady called <em>Amina El Maghrabi</em>, and I think that I might explode.</p><p>Underneath her name is written the span of her life, and it is very confusing. <em>1921–1936–</em>.</p><p>“Who is still alive?” I ask, and I realise that it sounds odd. “You know, out of the people… above our grandparents?”</p><p>“You mean in Grandma Hazel’s generation?” Anvika asks, and I don’t feel so bad for latching onto everything that is so far in the past it feels like a story. “Most of them. Grandma Hazel is still alive. She lives in Cambridge with her husband. Teddy Wong is still alive, and so is May Wong. My great grandmother Lavinia is still alive too, and her husband, though they’re very old.”</p><p>“Is…” I swallow. “Is Daisy Wells still alive?”</p><p>“She is. She lives in Cambridge, with her <em>wife</em>.”</p><p>I count inside my head. It is 2010 right now and she was born in 1921. She would be… eighty-nine. That is not so old, not at all. I would if she would talk to me, let me interview her. I wonder what Ma and Mum would think of me running off to Cambridge, and I realise how much I don’t care. I didn’t realise that people like me existed that far in the past, let alone that they were still alive. </p><p>I’d do anything to talk to her.</p><p>Anvika puts her hand over mine, and I can tell that she knows what I’m thinking. “I’ll try and convince your parents, okay? We can go up to Cambridge together.”</p><p>I like that idea very much.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>I turn the page. There are more family trees, detailing every branch of my family, but I am impatient.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My grandmother, Nanny Addie, once told me that her dad would say that I got it from one of her mum’s friends. I wonder, for the first time, if that impatient friend of my grandma’s mum is Daisy Wells. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pages are covered in photos. The first two pages are photos of my great-great grandfather and both of his wives, and my great-great-great grandfather in religious clothing. I turn the page to see several photos of all their staff lined up in rows — Grandma Hazel has taken great care to label every single servant that she knows the name of — and some photos of their compound in Hong Kong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next pages bring pictures of some strict-looking and formal British people. Underneath it, Grandma Hazel has written ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Lord and Lady Hastings, Daisy’s parents’</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anvika voices, in mild horror, “Don’t they look </span>
  <em>
    <span>awful</span>
  </em>
  <span>!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Emphatically, I agree.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But </span>
  <em>
    <span>he’s </span>
  </em>
  <span>handsome!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Underneath them is a photo of an incredibly dashing young man clutching his university degree. ‘</span>
  <em>
    <span>Felix Mountfitchet, Daisy’s uncle, his graduation from Oxford University in history (he once told us that his degree was as useful as trousers with the cuffs sewn shut)’</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ooh, doesn’t he look… mysterious!” I agree. I privately do not understand why Anvika finds boys handsome.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are some photos of a terrifyingly big manor house — </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fallingford, the Wells family home </span>
  </em>
  <span>— and, on the next page, a smart-looking doctor receiving awards and several wedding photos. </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Mukherjees</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Grandma Hazel has written, with an explanation of how Avinka’s great-great grandparents came to meet and marry. I think it's sweet. Anvika calls it boring.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>On the next page, the baby pictures start. They’re in strict order (I think that it’s Grandma Hazel-ish) by age, and I can tell the members of the cast of her life as I turn the pages.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Harold Mukherjee</span>
  </em>
  <span>, born on 2nd December 1916.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Honourable Albert Wells</span>
  </em>
  <span>, born on 14th February 1917 after a shotgun marriage.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>George Mukherjee</span>
  </em>
  <span>, born on 27th September 1920, unplanned but welcome.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The Honourable Daisy Wells</span>
  </em>
  <span>, born on 13th April 1921, conceived in an effort to reconcile a failing marriage.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Alexander Arcady</span>
  </em>
  <span>, born on 21st May 1921, an only child and celebrated as the heir to a company he never took over.</span>
</p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Hazel Wong</em>
  </b>
  <span>, born on 30th July 1921.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then follows Rose, and then May, and then everything sharply changes again.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>The page is titled </span>
  <strong>
    <em>Deepdean </em>
  </strong>
  <span>in a swirling script.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Since I was young, my father instilled in me a great love of England. I read English school story books about jolly English boarding school adventures, and hoped that I would have an utterly English best friend who would give me sweets and cakes and show me how to act as properly English as the girls from the books. My mother was infuriated. The had great arguments about my future education, which led to weeks upon weeks of them not speaking. I would be batted to and fro across the compound like a rather confused shuttlecock, delivering messages like a human telephone.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I was eleven, a man my father knew sent his daughter, Victoria Cheng, to a boarding school in Cairo. These boarding schools are mimicries of English ones, because everybody wanted to be English when I was young. My father was incensed that a Cheng had stood him up, and declared that he could not only do it just as well, but do it better. There would be no like-English schools for me, my father wouldn’t settle for that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Given my adoration of England, I had no complaints when I was put on a boat with a case full of English dresses and coats and shoes, and sent on the long journey across the world to a real English boarding school.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No complaints apart from the boat, of course. I still am not much of a fan.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>I look startling like the formal young girl in the photo, wearing a smart English uniform and smiling with uncertainty. Her body is shaped just like mine, big and squashy, but she is happy and pretty.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When I arrived in England, I was astonished. It was miserably cold and nobody was kind to me, and I was slammed into rather hard on a hockey pitch in my very first Games lesson, the culprit being a rather beautiful blonde girl, the epitome of English with chaotic plaits and very blue eyes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span> However, that was not the worst thing that would happen in my first week. This event is recorded in my blue casebook in detail, but I do not mind reflecting yet again. The same blonde girl dared me to hide in a trunk for hours, while the girls in my dorm giggled and marvelled at the fact that I could speak English. Our Matron was furious and screamed at me when she found me, but I did not give the other girls away. I spent a week mending socks and not having bunbreak, but it was almost worth it when I was released from the trunk and the blonde girl said, “Not bad, foreign girl.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That girl was Daisy Wells.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Casebook?” I say out loud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anvika smiles in a mysterious way and I want to thump her; she is definitely hiding something from me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The photo below this is of five girls, all standing in a line and smiling (except for one). </span>
  <em>
    <span>In Second Form</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Grandma Hazel explains, </span>
  <em>
    <span>we all shared one big dorm, all ten girls in the form. However, we split into two noticeable groups just after I arrived (January 1934) and those ended up becoming the two dorms that we split into later on.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Left to right, the girls in the photo are labelled </span>
  <em>
    <span>Lavinia Temple, Hazel Wong, Daisy Wells, Kitty (Katherine) Freebody, Beanie (Rebecca) Martineau</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Lavinia is heavy-set and looks furious, with a mop of dark hair and a missing tie. Hazel Wong is shy but pleased, and she is clutching a book. Once again, I think that she looks like me. Daisy Wells is tall and beautiful and blonde with distressed uniform, and she seems so very close, as if I could reach into the photo and touch her. Her expression is determined and she has her arm around Hazel’s shoulders. Kitty Freebody is pretty and freckles, her arm linked through Beanie Martineau’s, who is small and shy-looking with an enormous blazer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s sweet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She looks like you, only… not partly Chinese,” Anvika says, pointing to Beanie. “All shy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I look just like Grandma Hazel,” I disagree. “Only, she’s pretty.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anvika leans over and puts a hand on my cheek, and then she kisses the top of my head. “You’re pretty too, Rose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Underneath a photo of lines and lines of strict-looking schoolboys (</span>
  <em>
    <span>Eton, 1933</span>
  </em>
  <span>, with people sporadically labelled) there is a rather lovely photo. It has that old-fashioned yellowed quality to it, and it is of two laughing schoolboys, arms around each other’s shoulders. One is Bertie Wells, easily recognisable, and the other—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ooh!” I say, jabbing my finger at the page. “Who’s that? He looks cool. He’s got loads of freckles and probably has red hair, like that boy you like! </span>
  <em>
    <span>You </span>
  </em>
  <span>know, the one you told me about.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anvika has gone quite a funny colour. “Noooo,” she draws out in a stumble, blustering through some odd feeling that I can’t quite place. “Nooooo, no-no nooooo.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She won’t say anything else, so I give her a peculiar look and turn the page. After some stories, giggly schoolgirl stories about seances and bunbreaks and adventures into Deepdean town, a Christmas spent all on her own and a summer spent at the school alone too, Grandma Hazel has written something in big and swoopy writing. I think that it’s pretty.</span>
</p><p><em><span>The events that began on Tuesday 30</span></em><em><span>th</span></em> <em><span>October 1934 are recorded in my blue casebook.</span></em></p><p>
  <span>“Casebook?” I ask again, and this time Anvika replies.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>She drags me back up all the stairs and pulls down the door to the attic. Together, we jerk the ladder, both of us holding onto the rungs, until it extends and pitches us both back into the bathroom door. Anvika climbs up the ladder, because I am not allowed, and digs around in a box until she pulls out a thick pale blue notebook that is surprisingly simple for something from so far away in the past. I catch a glimpse of several other notebooks, carefully preserved in a box in neat rows with what seems like hundreds of others. But Anvika doesn’t pull those down. Like some sort of superhero, she slides down the ladder with one hand in the air and holds out the notebook to me.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I open the cover and it says, in surprisingly schoolgirl writing:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Being an account of</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>
      <br/>
    </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>the Case of the Murder of Miss Bell</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Written by Hazel Wong</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>
      <br/>
    </span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>(Detective Society Secretary), aged 13.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Begun Tuesday 30</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span>th</span>
  </em>
  <em>
    <span> October 1934.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>My heart is somewhere in my throat, and my head is so hot that I don’t think I can see, walk, or breathe. The past is closer than ever before, and I am holding history right in my hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I disappear into Anika’s bedroom and, curled up on her beanbag with a torch in my hand, I read the entire casebook in one night.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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